


Confined

by princess_smudge



Category: The Worst Witch (TV 2017)
Genre: Angst, Gen, Post-Season Finale, Trauma, my poor girl
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-21
Updated: 2019-03-21
Packaged: 2019-11-26 21:30:14
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,198
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18185963
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/princess_smudge/pseuds/princess_smudge
Summary: Joy tries, of course. She tries to escape.





	Confined

Joy tries, of course. She tries to escape, to break the confinement spell binding her. After all, she is Joy Hecate Hardbroom, and no one, not spell nor potion can ever contain her. And it's not as if she'd done anything wrong. Not really. But her Father shakes his head and tells her she's brought shame upon the Hardbroom line with her 'obsession with ignorant ordinaries' and watches as the spell is forced upon her.

And then he leaves, his words still ringing in her ears. 

_Actions have consequences, Joy._

As if venturing into the ordinary world simply to look, to see, to explore, is a crime worthy of imprisonment.

And she paces her too-small attic room, and her magic crackles and fizzes in the air, sending papers and books and clothes flying in every direction, as though she's some sort of reverse-magnet, repelling objects everywhere. 

She tries to escape that first night. How could she not? Why would she want to stay here, where she was treated like a stupid little girl, and teachers shook their heads whenever they saw her. And besides, she needs to find Indy. Needs her best friend to know that she hadn't abandoned her.

The first time, her head feels as though it has been cleaved in two, and she actually cries out in agony, screaming to the night so loudly she's sure her voice would carry up to the castle she is so desperate to escape, dismissed by the sleeping occupants as some wild creature. It's pain unlike anything she's ever known before, and she's sure, in that moment, that she's going to die. After all, how can _this_ be living, how could she survive when all she can feel is total, complete agony. She's still shaking when she reaches her room, drenched in sweat and her head still feeling as though it's going to split open.

The pain lasts for two days, and she staggers through her classes in a daze, every noise reverberating in her head.

It's a funny thing, pain. Afterwards, she convinces herself that it can't have been as bad as she's remembering, after all. Logic overpowers her emotions, and she throws herself into her potions once more. She's determined, and she returns two weeks later with a carefully concocted pain relief potion, grinning in a satisfied way as the potion turns her body pleasantly numb. But as she takes that penultimate step, she finds that the potion barely touches the sides of the pain that comes, just like last time, not to mention adding paranoia to boot. She stands, froze, utterly convinced that she's doomed, one leg still across the barrier and bent over with pain she's too terrified to attempt to stop. 

It's not just the fear. She can hear...  _things_. The snapping of twigs and the cries of Indy and Pippa and Mother and Father, all screaming in her head, begging for help, and she doesn't know where to run to in the dizzying chaos of her mind. When she finally manages to move, she transfers herself back to her room and doesn't leave for a week, claiming she's ill. With her pale complexion, her still throbbing head and near-uncontrollable vomiting, no one challenges her.

But still she tries, over and over, brewing potion after potion, researching spell after spell, because she can't be trapped here forever, can't even begin to fathom a life of confinement, even if the symptoms and side-effects just about send her mad. As the days stretch into weeks, and the holidays leave her the only student left alone with the teachers, her desperation gives way to a new kind of fury. After all, hadn't everyone always said that she was destined for  _great things?_  Hadn't they told her she would do  _marvellous things,_ and  _see amazing places?_ But now, she was stuck, with no way to make that happen.

Her thoughts are the worst at night. She doesn't really need the wide-awake potion she'd become so used to using, after all. Not when her mind does such a good job of tormenting her into consciousness, and she hates the time just before dawn, because that's when her thoughts seem to be darkest of all.

If she dies, will her body be forced to rot in the grounds of the castle?

Will she haunt this place forever?

She invariably starts pacing whenever this occurs to her, her mind working over any kind of solution until...

Until...

Well, if she can't go to Indy, then... then Indy will come to her. And she's so sure she's found the solution to the problems, because if she can't be normal, then maybe Indy can be a witch. And it's so brilliant, it's practically foolproof. After all, how could it fail? If Indy was a witch, then she'd have to stay, and of course, they'd figure out a problem to the confinement spell together.

She just needs the wishing star.

And then she'll show them all.

* * *

_"Passing back through mists of time,_

_I now delete your childhood crime,_

_Thirty years were long and hard,_

_Confined to turret, wall and yard_

_Look out at the world below,_

_Hecate, you're free to go."_

* * *

Hecate sinks to the ground, panting, fingers digging into the damp earth, and she hates it, hates her head spinning and her heart racing in her ear. She's free, she's free. She's free, Ada said, and she can leave and there's no pain cleaving her head because it's just her imagination and-

And.

And where else would she go? After all, she has no one. No one outside of the walls of the castle, no one to turn to. With a father long gone and Indy still a child and no friends and no family.

She's free.

Except she's not.

Not really.

Just kept to the grounds by a new kind of confinement.

Fear.

She can barely breathe, fingers grappling with the collar of her dress, trying desperately to loosen it, to get some air, but she overbalances, her shoulder colliding painfully with the trunk of a heavy tree.

After all, she's pure poison. She wounds people, always has. And it was her arrogance, her stupidity and her determination to be the best that put her in this situation, that cost her best friend thirty years of her life. Who else's life will she ruin?

She can't leave, and it's not the spell causing the fear throughout her body, or the pain in her head, but something more. Something that takes a lot more than a rhyme to get rid of.

It's instinct, sheer instinct that makes her hand twitch and brings her back to her quarters, and she can finally breathe. And it doesn't matter that the air is musty after the cool breeze outside, and it doesn't matter that it's dark and depressing. She presses herself into a corner and hugs her knees, trying to slow the pounding of her heart.

Just like she had the last four nights since Ada had reversed the spell. 

And as she drifts off into an uneasy sleep, her last coherent thought is the same as it had been the last few nights. 

Maybe tomorrow. 


End file.
